The family of Prince have reached an agreement over the division of his $156m estate following a six-year legal battle after the singer died without a will.
The star died aged 57 in April 2016 from a fentanyl overdose at his Paisley Park home outside Minneapolis. With no spouse or living children, Prince’s estate passed to his six half-siblings, who could not agree on a distribution plan and frequently ended up in court.
Three of the inheritors sold their shares to a company called Primary Wave, which bought out their rights to Prince’s extensive song catalogue in August last year. Three others kept their shares and the hired longtime Prince adviser L Londell McMillan and Charles Spicer to manage them.
In January, the heirs agreed to a $156m valuation of the estate in conjunction with the Internal Revenue Service and Comerica Bank, the estate’s administrator.
On Monday, a Minnesota judge signed off on the agreement, which splits $6m in cash plus many times that in music rights and other intangibles among the three remaining heirs, their families, their advisers, and Primary Wave.
In a statement obtained by Billboard, a Primary Wave spokesman said the company was “extremely pleased that the process of closing the Prince estate has now been finalized”.
“Prince was an iconic superstar and this transfer out of the court’s jurisdiction puts in place professional, skilled management,” Primary Wave said. “When we announced our acquisition of the additional expectancy interests in the estate last year bringing our ownership interest to 50%, our goal was to protect and grow Prince’s incomparable legacy. With the distribution of estate assets, we look forward to a strong and productive working relationship.”
In their own statement, McMillan said that he and his partners were “relieved and thrilled to finally be done with the probate court system and bankers who do not know the music business and did not know Prince” and were anticipating “implementing things the way Prince did”.
Throughout the legal process, the estate has put together several posthumous or archival Prince releases with different label partners, including Welcome 2 America and back-catalog reissues of Purple Rain, 1999 and Sign o’ the Times.